UW-Madison ECON 101: Principles of Microeconomics
ECON 101 is UW-Madison's introductory microeconomics: supply and demand, elasticity, consumer and producer behavior, and market structures. It's one of the largest courses on campus, serving pre-business students, economics majors, and a broad gen-ed population.
Fennie is independent and not affiliated with University of Wisconsin-Madison. This is an unofficial study guide.
What makes it hard
The grade rides on exams that test application: shift the right curve, compute the elasticity, compare market structures under time pressure. Lecture intuition feels sufficient until exam questions built so two answers look right expose the gap between familiarity and fluency, and the pre-business crowd makes the curve real.
What you'll cover
- • Supply, demand, and equilibrium
- • Elasticity
- • Consumer and producer surplus
- • Costs of production
- • Perfect competition and monopoly
- • Market failures and policy
The ECON 101 study guide
How to study for UW-Madison ECON 101, step by step.
- 1
Make practice questions the study unit
ECON 101 exams test doing (shifts, computations, comparisons), so study time belongs in problems from week one. Rereading notes builds familiarity, the exact false signal this course punishes.
- 2
Draw graphs by hand until automatic
Supply-demand shifts, surplus regions, cost curves, market structures. Producing the graph and its reasoning from scratch is what the questions secretly test, even in multiple-choice form.
- 3
Drill elasticity for both speed and meaning
The calculations are simple but exams reward pace, and interpretation questions follow close behind. Practice until number and meaning arrive together without hesitation.
- 4
Build a one-page market-structures comparison
Competition versus monopoly: assumptions, demand curves, outcomes, efficiency, side by side. Comparison questions are a fixture and crammed models blur together.
Today's ECON 101 plan
What a Fennie Daily Plan looks like for ECON 101. Yours is built from your syllabus and adapts every day to your deadlines and progress.
- Review: Perfect competition and monopolyReview · 25 min
Work back through the ECON 101 material on perfect competition and monopoly. In the app, Fennie builds this from your own notes and syllabus.
- Practice: Market failures and policyPractice · 20 min
Targeted problems on market failures and policy, the kind ECON 101 actually tests.
- Quick quiz: Supply, demand, and equilibriumQuiz · 10 min
Five generated questions to expose weak spots on supply, demand, and equilibrium before the exam does.
- Preview: ElasticityPreview · 10 min
A first pass over elasticity so the next session starts from familiar ground.
First plan free, no card required. Fennie is independent and unaffiliated with your school.
FAQ
Is ECON 101 at UW-Madison hard?
Moderate: the concepts are intro-level, but exams reward applied precision and speed, and the pre-business population keeps the bar honest. Students who practice application questions outperform note-rereaders almost mechanically.
How do I study for ECON 101 exams?
Work practice questions in exam format (curve shifts, elasticity computations, market-structure comparisons) under time. Draw the graphs by hand until automatic; the reasoning behind the graph is what questions test.
Should I take ECON 101 or ECON 102 first?
They're independent and either order works. Many students find micro (101) the more concrete entry point, and pre-business plans typically require both, so schedule by convenience.
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